Lance, rising at what he considered an early hour--five in the morning may well be considered early,--went whistling down to the corral to see what plans were on for the day. It was the day of Aleck Douglas's funeral, but the Devil's Tooth outfit would be represented only by a wreath of white carnations which Belle had ordered sent up from Pocatello. White carnations and Aleck Douglas did not seem to harmonize, but neither did the Devil's Tooth and Aleck Douglas, and the white wreath would be much less conspicuous and far more acceptable than the Lorrigans, Lance was thinking. He paused at the bunk-house and looked in. The place was deserted. He walked through it to the kitchen where the boys ate--the chuck-house, they called it--and found nothing to indicate that a meal had been eaten there lately. He went out and down to the stable, where Sam Pretty Cow was just finishing his stall cleaning. Shorty, who now had a permanently lame leg from falling under his horse up in the Lava Beds a year ago, was limping across the first corral with two full milk buckets in his hands. "Say, what time does this ranch get up, for heck sake?" Lance inquired of Sam Pretty Cow, stepping aside so that Sam might carry in a forkful of fresh hay. "I dunno--long time ago." Sam Pretty Cow turned the hay sidewise and went in to stuff his fragrant burden into the manger. "I was going out with the boys, if they went anywhere. Where have they all headed for, Sam? I could overtake them, maybe." Sam Pretty Cow, returning to the doorway, shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other and grinned. "I dunno, me," he responded amiably. "You don't _know?_ Didn't dad say anything? Didn't the boys?" And then, with faint exasperation, "Doesn't any one ever talk any more on this ranch?" Sam Pretty Cow gave him a swift, oblique glance and spat accurately at a great horsefly that had lighted on a board end. "Not much, you bet. Nh-hn." Lance called to Shorty, who had set his milk buckets down that he might open the little gate that swung inward,--the gate which horses were not supposed to know anything about. "Oh-h, Shorty! Where did dad and the boys go this morning?" Shorty turned slowly, pulling the gate open and propping it with a stick until he had set the buckets through. Deliberation was in his manner, deliberation was in his speech. "Las' night, you mean. They hit out right after midnight." "Well, where did they _go?_" Lance ground his cigarette under his heel. "You might ask 'em when they git back," Shorty suggested cryptically, and closed the gate just as carefully as if forty freedom-hungry horses were milling inside the corral. Lance watched him go and turned to Sam Pretty Cow who, having thrust his hay fork behind a brace in the stable wall, was preparing to vary his tobacco-chewing with a smoke. "What's the mystery, Sam? Where did they go? I'm here to stay, and I'm one of the family--I _think_--and you may as well tell me."